The Future of the Internet: Are Apps Killing the Web?

Some profound thoughts for your weekend contemplation:

By Farhad Manjoo in Slate:

Last summer, in a much-read cover story, Wired proclaimed that the Web is dead. Chris Anderson, the magazine's editor, argued that loading pages in a browser is passé. The future, Anderson wrote, is in downloadable apps, which have several advantages over the Web. They're fast, they can be customized for specific purposes, and—perhaps most importantly—people seem to have no problem paying for them, which means that software and media companies have an incentive to keep creating more. Few of us, meanwhile, pay for Web content—and our reluctance, Anderson argued, spoke volumes about what we really want from our computers: "Much as we love freedom and choice, we also love things that just work, reliably and seamlessly."

Anderson's argument was instantly showered with criticism—much of it from people who write on the Web—but if you went beyond the blustery headline and graphics, it wasn't an unreasonable prediction. People spend a lot of time and money on apps these days, and many developers are indeed devoting more of their resources to apps than to the Web. Still, I've been skeptical of the Web-is-dead idea. The Web has one main advantage over apps: It works everywhere, and that's important in a post-Windows world. Since our computers, phones, and tablets use different operating systems, we need a single platform to unite them all. Sure, programmers can theoretically write different apps for the iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry, Palm, and every other gadget that comes along, but that doesn't seem tenable. Instead, they'll come to see the advantages of creating content and applications that work across devices. There's no better uniter than the Web.

But as I began to think about how the Internet will evolve—for this, the second article in my series on the future of tech—I found myself splitting the difference. Both Anderson's view—"The Web is dead!"—and my view—"Ditch the App Store!"—lack nuance. It seems safer and wiser to bet that the Web and apps will survive over the long run or, at least, for the next five years. Indeed, as mobile browsers and Web programming systems improve, the difference between sites you access from a browser and apps you download from a centralized store will surely shrink. Web sites will grow more adept at storing content locally (so you won't have to be online to use them), they'll get better at using your device's specialized hardware, and their interfaces will look and feel just as complex and responsive as those of native apps.